


Midsummer 1803

by feroxargentea



Category: Master and Commander - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-30
Updated: 2012-11-30
Packaged: 2017-11-19 21:58:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/578089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feroxargentea/pseuds/feroxargentea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Post Captain</i>: the book in which our heroines’ lives and friendship are disrupted by a couple of pesky men. This ficlet is set around the time of Chapter 4 and is more of a ‘what if’ than a true missing scene.</p><p>Written for Sharpiefan's Master and Commander Minor Characters Challenge, for the prompt: <i>more ficlets involving the women of the Aubreyad</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Midsummer 1803

 

 

 

Midsummer’s eve it may have been, but Mapes Court was far from summery that night. Rain was spattering against the panes and occasional pellets of hail were rattling down the tower-room’s chimney into the hearth-fire below. Sophie drew her shawl more closely round her shoulders and tucked her slippered feet up on the sofa.

Diana watched her gazing into the leaping flames. “So, tell me,” she said at last, when the silence had stretched longer than she could bear, “were the famous Beaux of Bath everything our dear Mrs Blagrove promised?”

Sophie looked up, blinking. “That old busybody, how interfering she is,” she said. “I suppose she means well, but I wish she would...” She paused, the fate of the local gossip apparently unspeakable. “But yes, they were just as she said: handsome fellows, peacocking up and down the Pump Room and the ballrooms in their tight coats. Cecilia was in such a flutter, you cannot imagine.”

“On the contrary, I can quite imagine,” said Diana. “She has but to see a single red coat and she is simmering like a jam-pan.”

“Dear Cissy, she is such a child still. She learnt a new way of plaiting pink ribands into her hair and means to show you tomorrow. You will be kind to her, will you not? But then you are always kind.”

Sophie’s tone was calm, so calm that a stranger might not have noticed its barb. Diana coughed to hide her wince.

“I thought she might be wearing her ribands to a Bath wedding by now – yours if not hers,” she said. “You cannot tell me Aunt Williams did not set out a-purpose to find you a match. Did you not particularly care for any of her eligible gentleman?”

“No. No. That is to say, not as well as I...”

“Not as well as you cared for Captain Aubrey. You might as well say it aloud. Your mama may slap you down but _I_ shall not, whatever you might think.”

Sophie shifted on the couch, her expression more weary than resentful; if any gossip about her cousin’s preference for riding out with Jack Aubrey was abroad in the village, it did not seem to have reached her ears. “If we only knew that they were safe, that those odious French had not taken them!” she said. “He and dear Doctor Maturin too, it is so horrible to think of it! Is there truly no hope of escape, do you suppose?”

“Admiral Haddock thinks not; he told me so when last he called. There has been not a word from either of them since war was declared, and that was a full month ago.”

“But they were prisoners of the French once before, and they were – what was it? Changed? No, exchanged,” said Sophie.

“There has been no exchange of prisoners this time, though,” said Diana, “and not much likelihood of it, or so Admiral Haddock says. If they are taken, they will likely be held for as long as this wretched war lasts.”

There was silence in the tower-room for a few minutes, both women watching the flames shivering in the draught.

“Have you truly had no word from them, either of them? Diana, I do not mean to pry, but...”

“No,” said Diana shortly. Then she glanced at Sophie’s face, and the unhappiness she saw there made her feel something almost like shame, though she pushed it down impatiently. She had spent the past several weeks trying to dismiss memories of the irritating way both Aubrey and Maturin had looked at her, that mixture of humiliated need and the hangdog defiance of men who knew themselves used. “Do not make a fuss, Sophie. They will be safe enough in France and come home before we have made up our minds to miss them, most likely, and if Aubrey does not come up to the mark for you, why then I shall stick my oar in and make him! How is that for a fine nautical term, hey? And Cecilia can wear her pink ribands to your wedding.”

Sophie gave an almost convincing smile. “You must help me put ribands in Frankie’s hair too. It will take both of us to pin her down.” She hesitated a moment. “And what of Doctor Maturin?”

“What of him?”

“I know perfectly well you like him, Diana, even if you pretend you don’t care a jot.”

“Of course I _like_ the man, anyone would _like_ the man. I shan’t go and marry him because I _like_ him. Romance might make fools of most women, but I am neither a romantic nor such a fool as that.”

Sophie did not argue, but merely sighed and reached over to poke at the fire. She had a mulish look to her, though, the one she sometimes wore when her mother was not there to scold her out of it.

“Well, Captain Aubrey left no word, and if he is to be in France for years on end he is not very likely to return to Melbury, of all the places in the world he might go,” she said. “Di, do you ever wish you were – not a man, exactly, but do you ever wish you could sail away, go to France or – or anywhere, if you liked?”

“Bah! I’ve sailed much further than France.”

“I know that, but do you ever wish—”

“No. Oh, of course I do, Sophie, what a silly thing to say. Don’t be such a goose! But there is something to be said for four walls, a solid roof, applewood burning in the grate.” She paused. “And family who cannot turn you away.”

The fire had burned almost to embers by now, the applewood mere spindles, white with ash.

“I have been thinking about it a good deal,” said Sophie slowly, without taking her eyes off the glowing remnants, “and I do not think I shall ever marry anyone. I shall be an old maid and knit stockings for Cissy’s twenty offspring. I shall be content enough, I expect.”

“You need not marry, if you do not like,” said Diana. “If I were you, I should retire on my portion and tell the less gentle sex to—to be off and leave me alone.”

“And yet, alone for all one’s years, such a solitude...”

“Quite. Blissful solitude.” Diana knew she sounded bitter, and did not care.

“I suppose... I suppose it has been lonely for you, these weeks here by yourself. I am sorry for it, now, Di, truly I am. I wish I had insisted that Mama took you to Bath with us.”

Diana patted Sophie’s ankle with brisk tenderness. “Oh, fie. We have been like two hens squabbling over an apple-core, and just about as dignified. It is only... oh, it is only that sometimes I dream I shall end up lying alone, cold, somewhere out there in the dark, and I tell myself I do not care a fig, and I cannot bear it for all that. I cannot _bear_ it, do you see?”

“I think I do, a little. Di, may I stay here tonight?”

“In the tower?”

“Yes.”

“If you like. The bedchamber is not as warm as this parlour, though.” She wished she could see Sophie’s face more clearly in the firelight: sympathy, pity, or perhaps it was merely sorrow that made her eyes so dark.

“It should be warm enough with the two of us,” said Sophie.

“I suppose so. Oh, let us not quarrel over men! Let us promise not to,” said Diana impetuously. “They do nothing but bring trouble between us, the tiresome creatures. I shall renounce them all.”

“I know you do not mean it. You are not made for peace. But, Di?”

“What?”

“You are not alone. Never think so.”

Diana leant over and kissed her cousin on the forehead. “I know. I forget it for a while, here and there, but I do know. Come to bed now, for goodness’ sake, before we set to quarrelling again. A plague on all outsiders.” She stood up and held out her hand.

Sophie looked at it for a long moment. Then she took it firmly and pulled herself to her feet.

“A plague on all outsiders,” she said, and led the way to the bedroom.

 

 


End file.
